CIS food

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Strana Katorioy Net literally means “a country that does not exist” and it is one of the restaurants owned by restauranteur Arkady Novikov, who owns many restaurants in Moscow (and now also in London). The restaurant is located on one side of hotel Moscow that will soon become Four Seasons hotel, in the centre of Moscow, and next to the Red Square, the Bolshoi Theatre and the State Duma

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Mari Vanna is a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge, in front of the new Bulgari hotel and next to 1 Hyde Park, strategically placed, as this is an area beloved by the Russian community. Mari Vanna also has branches in New York, St Petersburg and Moscow. If you are Russian (or Russian speaking like myself) you will most likely really like this place, because it sort of reminds you of home, and most people that go there are Russian speakers or foreigners brought there by Russian speakers. You enter and the waitresses dressed in flowery aprons speak to you in Russian (all the waiters are Russian or Russian speaking, our waitress when we went there was Latvian), and it just feels quite surreal to be surrounded by this Russian atmosphere as soon as you walk in.

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The restaurant’s name “Beloe solntse pustini” (Белое солнце пустыни or in English white sun of the desert) comes from a very famous 1970 Soviet film directed by Vladimir Motyl, which shows the adventures of a Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov, saving women of the harem bandit Abdullah during the Civil War. It is one of the most famous Soviet time movies and a lot of the phrases from the movie have become very popular and used even in the modern times. The restaurant in a true Russian way, serves not 1 type of cuisine, but many - Uzbek, Azerbaijan, Arabic and Chinese food, there is actually quite hard to find a restaurant in Moscow that would serve just 1 type of cuisine.

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“Uzbekistana” restaurant serves typical Uzbekistan cuisine, and as Latvia was part of the USSR not so long ago, there is a big influence in food that Latvians eat from various Russian and Central Asian cultures and recently there have been a lot of Central Asian restaurants opening up in Latvia which are very popular. “Uzbekistana” is very popular, which as I have mentioned before is so rare in Latvia, as most of the restaurants are quite empty in Riga due to many reasons (people can’t afford to eat out, it is not yet our culture to eat out, etc…), but “Uzbekistana” is always full of people, because the food they offer is so delicious and also reasonably priced if you like this type of food. I first heard about this place a few years ago when my friend Kristaps told me about a new restaurant that serves delicious and good value for money food and is always busy and you need to book.

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I have stayed in the Hyatt hotel in Moscow many times now, and it is a very central hotel, located right next to the red square and is one of the main hotels for business people to stay at. Hyatt also has a bar on the 10th floor of the hotel called The Conservatory Lounge & Bar where on one occasion I went to get food with my friend J as I was too lazy to go anywhere else and it does offer a somewhat nice view of Moscow (it is not high enough to offer a great view).

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Armenia restaurant as the name suggests serves Armenian food and the place is located in the centre of Riga and quite close to my dad’s apartment, so it was convenient for my dad, my brother and myself to go there for a quick meal before my flight back to London. Armenia is very similar to another restaurant located in Riga called “Uzbekistana” as both places serve Central Asian food, and the difference is that “Uzbekistana” is around 20% cheaper even though the quality of the food is the same (also despite this 20% premium Armenia would not be expensive by any standards), so people always prefer to go to “Uzbekistana” (it is very busy and you have to book) and there are less people in Armenia. If you don’t mind paying 20% more, do go to Armenia, as the food is similar in terms of quality.

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This is a new Azerbaijani restaurant on Sloane Street, and the coolest thing about this place is that when you order they give you an Ipad instead of a traditional menu, where you can see all the dishes you can chose from including their pictures, which is an amazing idea, as I felt like I ordered the best meal out of all the options (I am sure we all have felt at some point that we have ordered something in a restaurant and it turned out to be something differrent, so this visual help is great in my view). The whole place is very posh, a bit like Sketch, with huge white posh chairs, very big white room so the actual ambience reminds you very little of Azerbaijan. Food is nice, but it does lack Azerbaijani flavours in my view, and is really catered for an audience that just wants posh food in a posh environment without the true local vibe.

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I have been to Barashka twice now and I really like it. The restaurant serves Azerbaijan food and there are now 5 Barashka restaurants located in Moscow and I went to the one quite close to the red square and Barashka is one of the restaurants of the Novikov group (Mr Novikov owns many different restaurants in Moscow and as well as in London). The interior is nice, and when you enter you can either sit downstairs in the smoking area (by the entrance you can see nice sweets you can see in the picture) and on this visit I was offered a seat upstairs in the non smoking section.

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4.00

Hungry Bee Maija Restaurant blog

A Latvian girl who works in finance but has a deep passion for food! She lives to eat! :)

The website aims to share her thoughts on many of the meals she has had around the world and all the places she has visited, from michellin ranked and best restaurants in the world to casual, cool and quite cheap places.

Ratings

Maija assigns restaurants rating ranging from m (very bad) to MMMMM (very good) so the more "M"s a restaurants gets the better. Small "m"s mean half points. Note Maija gives a high rating based on the overall experience in the restaurant and also based on how delicious and enjoyable the meal was and not based on the quality or price of ingredients.